Sunday, 7 January 2018

New Year Clear Out!

I thought I’d begin 2018 with a bit of a
clear out.

Since beginning this blog, I have accumulated a pile of news
items that, though interesting, I haven’t been able to use on the blog. Most of
these stories ended up in the pile for one of three reasons: they weren’t
really Fortean (even though I have adopted quite a broad definition for the
blog); they didn’t happen in Ireland; or they were just too short to publish as
standalone posts (Fortean Ireland may be free, but I like to give value for
money).

Anyway, I feel that most of these stories are
too good to waste. So, here are two from the pile. I hope you enjoy
them.

NO BHOYS ON THE HOOD

On a November day in 1945, on a beach near
Angry, County Donegal, a small child found a corked bottle. It had a message
inside:

“This is a note. I hope it will be picked up
by someone so that they will let my mother know. It is from her son who is at
present aboard HMS Hood. They are coming fast mother. I have no time to write
anymore. Good-bye mother.”

The HMS Hood had been destroyed at the Battle
of the Denmark Strait in 1941. The loss of the Hood was a major blow to the
British war effort, and the cost in lives was immense. Of the 1418 men on board
that day, all but three perished.

So when Donal McDonald’s note was passed to
local woman Bella Boyle, it must have weighed heavily on her that this note was
from one of those terrified sailors – a sailor who had reached out to his
mother in his final moments.

She immediately sent a copy to the address
given by the sailor.

Given the nature of the message, Mrs Boyle
may have expected a reply from a very grateful Mrs McDonald. But she didn’t get
one.

And she never would. A journalist, intrigued
by the story, travelled to the small island in the Outer Hebrides and
discovered that, though there were four McDonalds living on Ben Becula, none of
them were connected to a Donal McDonald. In fact, no one knew of a Donal
McDonald.

Who - or what - was behind this cruel trick
was never discovered.

Sources:

Belfast News-Letter, 20 November 1945

The Londonderry Sentinel, 20 November 1945

HEAVEN KNOWS I’M MISERABLE NOW

Ghosts don’t usually surrender, but that’s
exactly what happened near Kilkenny in 1883.

In January of that year, a ghost began
haunting a stretch of road on the outskirts of the town, frightening people and
horses alike. But the sudden appearance of a ghost made some of the locals very
suspicious.

And so, one night, a “party of young men” set
out to solve the mystery.

They had no luck that first night, but on the
following night their luck changed – as did the ghost’s. They found the spook
at its usual haunt, appropriately robed in ghostly white. And as the men - who
were all armed with stout sticks - approached, the ghost tried to scare them
off with a couple of “woos.”

Sensing – quite correctly – that these men were
immune to “woos”, the ghost made a break for it. But after a bit of a chase –
three quarters of a mile, to be exact - the very exhausted ghost surrendered.

And what was the ghost? It was just a man
looking for a job; a man who believed that the best way to get a job was to
scare the current jobholder into retirement.

The “ghost” was very lucky: he was unmolested
and the mob let him go instead of handing him over to the police.

Usually, though, these things don’t end well.
For example, in 1875, in Hampton Wick, a fifteen-year-old shop boy called Frank
Williams was sentenced to one month in prison with hard labour after he was
unmasked as the stone-throwing ghost that had plagued a local shop owner.

And in 1926, an ex-soldier received multiple
stab wounds after he covered himself with a white tablecloth and walked up to
the sentry on duty at a Royal Marines base in Deal, Kent.